



K A\ 



OLD 
NEW 
YORK 




DOWN 
TOWN 



M' 




P u b 1 i B h e d It y 
THE BROUN-GREEN CO. 

Forty Beaver Street, New York 
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OLD NEW YORK 



DOWNTOWN 



THtBROVN Green Ca 



COMPILER'S PREFACE. 

/V A ERCHANT, attorney, broker, clerk, each of 
* ' *■ us who pass back and forth south of the 
City Hall to-day in our business, are walking over 
historic ground. The very streets (with but few 
changes) are the same as when Petrus Stuyvesant 
set in motion the tirst good stable government of the 
little town ; as when the Liberty Boys took the first 
action for American Independence long before the 
Revolution ; as when British troops held New York 
and when Washington drove in his coach of state 
up Broadway, spending his evening at the little 
theatre on John Street ; when, again, Alexander 
Hamilton lived on Wall Street, and nearly every 
corner has its story. 

Generally speaking, the scenes of New York's 
past are known, but not all the sites have been 
authenticated. In many cases it can be said that 
such and such an old building stood about here or 
near to that, yet the exact spot, the precise few feet 
it occupied may not be settled upon. 

But enough has been discovered to make a trac- 
ing of the streets of New York, the historic sites 
familiarly passed each day, quite possible. The 
past few years have brought out much new knowl- 
edge, many additional facts. Historic New York 
is fairly well identified. The old Dutch town of 
New Amsterdam came up to what is now the south 
side of Wall Street, a wall of palisades stretching 
across the island just above. In the days of Govern- 
or Dongan, whose name is recalled in the Dongan 
Charter and the Dongan Hills on Staten Island, this 
wall was taken down, and this clever Irishman, 
inaugurating the days of real estate speculation 
and investment on Manhattan Island (with much 
gain to his own pocket), the English town and 



later the little American city spread up to where 
City Hall Park is now. 

In the Dutch town, Pearl Street was the river's 
edge, the " strand," and fashion congregated here. 
A canal ran through Broad Street, where there was 
also the first " Swamp " and the first tanneries and 
bootmakers. Broadway was yet unbuilt. At Ex- 
change Place and Broadway there was a high hill. 
The Dutch Fort stood to the south of what is now 
Bowling Green. There was no Battery Park, only 
a fringe of rocks along the present State Street. 
In early English times Pearl Street, Broadway and 
Wall Street became the haunts of society and retail 
trade. Broadway was never intended to run beyond 
St. Paul's Church. It was planned to have the 
town extend to the east, with the Bowery Road, Park 
Row, and the Bowery and Third Avenue (the Post 
road to Boston), its back bone. Long after the 
little city had spread to the east, the west side was 
wide-spreading farms. The Hudson River came 
up very close to the present Greenwich Street. 

In the making of this short account of sites and 
streets there has been no attempt at original re- 
search. It represents an effort, simply, to separate 
facts from the mass of careless tradition. Too 
much misinformation about old New York has been 
put into print, only to be copied and recopied until 
believed. In the following pages only the state- 
ments of the foremost authorities have been con- 
sidered, and there is evidence to support every 
point. Space does not permit an enumeration of 
authorities consulted but acknowledgments are due 
to nearly every writer on the history of New York. 

CROMWELL CHILDE. 



PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. 

T T E who walks the streets of downtown New 
York may give occasional speculative thought 
to the past and wonder by whom the way he treads 
was trodden in gone-by days. But a man in down- 
town New York is apt to be a busy man and to 
have but little leisure to delve into the past, or time 
for the perusal of the many excellent histories 
which deal with the subject. This booklet has been 
prepared for such. The publishers trust that the 
subject and its treatment may prove of interest 
and be found instructive. While there is no pretense 
of preparing an exhaustive treatise, yet it is believed 
the ground has been fully covered and accurately. 
Incidentally also, this publication is intended 
to serve as a specimen of the typographical ability 
of the establishment numbered forty on Beaver 
street, where has been located for many years 

THE BROUN-GREEN COMPANY, 

PRINTERS AND STATIONERS. 




THE FORT, THE BEACH AND 
BOWLING GREEN. 

(INCLUDING STATE STREET AND THE BATTERY.) 

T_r ISTORICALLY, the large square bounded by 
■^ ■*■ Bowling Green, State Street, Stone Street 
and Whitehall Street, where the foundations for the 
new Custom House are being laid (August, 1901), 
yields in point of interest to no other site. It was 
here Fort Amsterdam stood, with a church and resi- 
dence within its walls. (The Holland Society of New 
York has a tablet in commemoration of this old 
stronghold, which will be put into place again when 
the Custom House is completed.) Here, later, the 
famous red brick Government House, in which 
Washington never lived, but Governor Clinton did, 
was erected, to be followed in its turn, in the early 
days of the last century, by that row of handsome 
residences that were given the name of " Quality 
Row," After they had fallen from their high estate 
and become the offices of ocean liners they were 
known as "Steamship Row." 

At one time, too, though not for long, in the first 
years of the Government, the Custom House was here, 
in the Government House itself, and, while its pre- 
cise site has not been determined, on this block is 
said to have been the beginnings of all things in the 



OLD NEW \ORK DOWNTOWN 

settlement of New York, the first hurried fortifica- 
tion thrown up for the protection of the traders. 

New Amsterdam, as a town at the very first, has 
been summed up by an authority as a fort of cedar 
paUsades and a block house ; a few years later as a 
larger fort, of stone and earthwork, 300 feet long 
and 250 broad, and within the enclosure three wind- 
mills, a guard house and barracks, a stone church 
(of which Domine Bogardus, second husband of 
Anneke Jans, was pastor), and a house for the 
Director. Outside these fortifications were about 
300 huts strung along the East River close to the 
fort. 

Hendrick Hudson, when he came sailing up the 
Hudson in his Halve Mooi in 1609, looked disdain- 
fully at Manhattan Island and returned disap- 
pointedly to Holland, having failed to find a north- 
west passage to India. And the Dutch Government 
took his cue and thought the newly found land not 
worth considering. It was not until some commer- 
cial spirits m Holland became suddenly awake to 
the possibilities of the fur trade that the Island on 
the banks of this far distant river was considered 
seriously. These merchants, combined into the 
West India Company ( chartered 
in 162 I ), soon found the stock- 
%., ^ ade built in 16 14 too small an 

^^^ affair and started the fort and 

j ^^^mKt/k colony. 

■^jJWjpHpil B The Sally-port of Fort 

^'^©^^J^ES Amsterdam was to the north, 

^^Sh^^^^^J upon "The Plaine" (now 

^'' '^^^??^^h|| Bowling Green), and according 

to Thomas A. Janvier's plan it 

1 THE BATTERY. extcuded to tlie prcscut Bridge 

Street line, the hill it was on reaching across the 

present Whitehall Street half way to Broad. Pieter 

Minuit's bartering, by which he got the whole of 

Manhattan Island for twenty-four dollars (this 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



"deal" probably consummated on "The Plaine "), 
is well recalled. Peter Stuyvesant stood in an angle 
of the fort when the English fleet came up the 
bay on a day in 1664 saying: "I had rather be 
carried a corpse to my grave than to surrender 
the city." Nevertheless Fort Amsterdam had to 
fall — too weak to resist. Again and again Stuy- 
vesant had implored the Dutch Government to 
strengthen it, knowing what its fate must be if 
assailed. It must have been a veritable opera 
boufife of a fort, even for those colonial days. 

There was no Battery Park then. All this land 
is made ground since the year 1783. The original 
high water mark of the Hudson, where it joined the 
East River, closely hugged the old fort, curving 
around from about the foot of the present Green- 
wich Street, practically along what is now State 
Street, to just beyond Pearl Street, where the East 
River began. But little of this land was filled in 
until well within the nineteenth century. In Dutch 
and English days there was simply a fringe of rocks 
where the rivers met. 

Spencer Trask says that the fort cost $1,635, 
and the church within the enclosure $1,000. This 
was the first substantial church in New Amsterdam. 
After the English came into power the need of 
additional fortifications got more attention. It was 
finally determined to build a battery under the walls 
of the fort, which was done in the year 1683. Some 
say this battery was not erected until ten years later, 
but the accuracy of the former date seems to be 
proved by this line of a report of 1688. "Out the 
Fort, under the flag-mount, near the waterside, five 
demi-culverins." At all events, it was this stand of 
firing pieces, on the Capkse Rocks, now covered by 
the Bowling Green end of Battery Place, that gave 
to this section of New York its name of The Battery. 
The shore here went by the name of Capsey 
Hook (says Alice Morse Earle), and the old docu- 



OLD NEW YORK 



D O \V N TOWN 



ments of the time tell how the line of the State 
Street of to-day was a beach, on which, in Dutch 
days, criminals were executed. Half a century to a 
century later The Battery really deserved its name. 
Ratzen's map (printed in 1767) shows a line of 
works extending along the Capkse Reef frum the 
foot of Greenwich Street to Whitehall Slip. This 
battery was well along in construction in 1738, and 
an effective defence by the time of the Revolution. 
There are no figures telling of its armament, except 
that in 1776 at least 23 guns were mounted upon it. 
With Queen Anne's accession to the English 
Throne the old Fort became known as Fort George. 
In 1790 it was demolished, to give place to the 
new Government House, planned to be the Execu- 
tive Mansion of the country. In 1789 the Legis- 
lature passed an act, "The ground at the Fort and 
the Battery shall be reserved for the public use and 
for continuing the Broad Way through to the river." 




1 R T GEORGE FROM W A T E K 



The earth and the stones from the Fort and its 
small hill were used " to enlarge the area of the 
battery." 

Soon after the coming in of the nineteenth cen- 
tury yet another fortification arose, the Southwest 
Battery, later to be known as Fort or Castle Clinton, 
still later as Castle Garden. When it was built, 
between the years 1807 and 181 i, it stood a 
full 300 feet out from the shore, on the outlying 
reef, and was reached by a long draw-bridge. 
Twenty-eight 32-pounders made up its armament, 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

and it was a distinguished addition to the line of 
the Battery's works. 

Then Battery Park or Battery Walk, half its 
present size, began to be a popular pleasuring 




ROM n A r I I" i; 



ground. In 1840 there was no sea wall, but beach 
and rocks only. The National Government, in 
1822, took Governor's Island as a military head- 
quarters, ceding Castle Clinton to the City. In 1824 
Lafayette landed at Castle Clinton, and fashion at 
once set its seal of approval upon the ex-fort as a 
resort. On festal occasions colored lamps shone 
on it and bird cages and baskets of flowers hung 
in the casements. No New York building has had 
more remarkable social history. 

A public assembly room and famous ballroom 
at first, Castle Garden afterwards became a theatre 
and opera house, the greatest of its era. The New 
York Aquarium is now on its site. Battery Park 
having long since been filled in to the old Castle's 
outer walls. This last change has completely trans- 
formed the ancient fort. The building, from 1855 
to very nearly the present day, was used as an 
emigrants' landing place, under the name of Castle 
Garden. But before 1855, not only was Lafayette 
welcomed here, and Presidents Tyler and Jackson 
and Henry Clay, but in 1850 the noted cantatrice, 
Jenny Lind, sung in the great auditorium under the 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

management of P. T. Barnum. There was a great 
demonstration in honor of S. F, B. Morse in 1835 
in this building ; Kossuth was there sixteen years 
later, and through these years the park outside was 
the promenade and great social gathering place ; on 
occasions a parade ground, where " the Pulaski 
Cadets, the Light Guard, the red-coated City 
Guards, and the Tompkins Blues manoeuvred." 
It is difBcult in few words to do justice to what 
Castle Garden and the Battery were to New Yorkers 
from 1824 to 1855. 

" The Government House " (at the foot of 
Broadway), wrote Governor Drayton, in 1793, "is 
two stories high. Projecting before it is a portico, 
covered by a pediment, * * * and the pediment is 
supported by four white pillars of the Ionic order, 
which are the height of both stories." 

By act of the Legislature, May 26, 1812, the 
site of this bviilding, transferred to the State some 
years before, was sold by the State to the 
corporation of the City of New York, and in 
1815 the City sold it in seven lots to private 
buyers for residences. Each lot was about 31 
feet front and 130 feet deep. Built as a row in 
1 8 18, these residences were long the finest houses 
in New York, and they marked precisely the front 
of the old fort. Garibaldi was entertained in 
them, as was John Quincy Adams, Clay, Webster, 
Calhoun, and Louis Napoleon long before he came 
to his empire. Lot 7, on the corner of State Street, 
was sold in 1S25 to the noted merchant, Stephen 
Whitney, who, that same year, erected here the 
handsomest of all the houses in the row. Mr. 
Whitney lived in this house until his death, and 
when (about i860) he was buried from Trinity, his 
was the last Knickerbocker house below Broadway. 
By that time Fifth Avenue had started on its course 
and the notable families were all well up town, but 
the old gentleman thought, to the last, that fashion 
would return to the Battery. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

Lot 5 was at one time Commodore Vanderbilt's 
house, and after that his office. Around on State 
Street, on the same block, the second house from 
Bowling Green (Lot 9 of the Government House 
Lots), Daniel Webster had his residence, buying in 
1828. At 9 State Street lived John Morton, "the 
rebel banker," at 16 and 17 Robert Lenox. Very 
late downtown, keeping his house here when nearly 
every one else had moved away, was Robert Goelet, 
whose home was also on State Street. At 22 and 
24 Greenwich Street, a block away, now in the 
immigrant quarter, were, in the century's early days, 
the residences of two famous merchants, Moses 
Taylor and Henry Suydam. 

In State Street, too, Washington Irving lived, 
and in the house on the eastern corner of Green- 
wich Street and Battery Place, built in the garden 
of the once great residence i Broadway, lived and 
died the inventor of the steamship, Robert Fulton. 

Logically, Bowling Green, the little park, is the 
heart of Old New York. After being " The Plaine " 
it was "The Parade," and in 1732, that the town 
might be improved, the city fathers announced that 
they would lease it, to be laid out with walks and 
as a bowling green. Three citizens therefore took 
it, under these conditions, for eleven years, at an 
annual rent of one peppercorn. 

In 177 1 an iron railing was set about it, and an 
equestrian statue of George III. erected there. 
$5,000, it is said, was spent on this fence and its 
stone foundation. The fence and the stones are 
still in place, "the crowns which originally orna- 
mented the tops of the pillars having been broken 
off '' (Spencer Trask). 

At the time of the evacuation of New York by 
the British (about 1783) there was on each iron 
post a King George cross. After the evacuation 
these crosses were broken off by the citizens of New 
York, and the fence still shows where the crosses 



() L I) N E W YORK D O W N T O W N 

were. It has also been stated that the posts were 
surmounted by iron balls, which were broken off 
during the colonial wars and used for cannon balls. 

" The British shall have melted majesty fired at 
them.'' So said a patriot merchant in 1776, and a 
mob (of respectable people) tore down the statue of 
the King, and had it melted into bullets. The 
horse's tail, saved from the wreck, is in the posses- 
sion of the New York Historical Society. 

But the first of the Green, as an ancient Dutch 
ordinance (1659) tells, was its use as a market. 
To east and to west was the T'Marckvelt, "The 
Market Field." 




I) r I c H H r s E> 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



UP BROADWAY. 



MANY names seem to have been Broadway's 
birthright. Before it was even an established 
street it was a locality. When, in 1659, the market 
was started on " The Plaine," the present first block 
of Broadway to the west of the little park was a part 
of the market field, 'l"Marckvelt. In its first days 
as a street it was called De Heere Straat. While 
the Dutch ruled it ran only to what is now Wall 
Street, where the wall stretched across Manhat- 
tan Island. Here was the " Land Gate," the way 
out to the fields beyond. Outside of the wall what 
road there was went by the name of De Heere 
Weg. These two terms meant, " the principal 
street," " the principal road." 

Later, when the English were in command, it 
became the Broad Way, Broadway Street and Broad- 
way. By the time the Revolution had come in it 
reached out very nearly to Duane Street. Up to 
the close of the eighteenth century that part beyond 
City Hall Park was spoken of as 
St. George or Great George Street, 
and later as the Middle Road. 

The plan of the English 
moulders of the little city was to 
have Broadway end at St. Paul's. 
Business and residences were to 
turn there and follow up the Bow- 
ery Road. The west side of New 
York was taken little into account 
in the early days of the town. 
But the Dutch Heere Straat and 
Heere Weg kept on their course and now have 
become the longest street in the world, being a con- 
tinuous thoroughfare from the Battery to Albany, 
and known as Broadway from one end to the other. 




BROADWAY 

S28 . 



OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



At No. I Broadway's history begins. It is a 
curious and little thought of fact that nearly all this 
street's story, as regards Old New York, is of its 
western side. History, in fact, scarcely knows what 
buildings there were to the east. 

No. I Broadway, where the Washington Building 
stands, is a landmark of much note. A tablet upon 
it commemorates the pulling down of King George's 
statue in the Green in front. But there is far 
more about i Broadway. 

In the dawn of New York history a Dutch 
widow kept a tavern here, Annetje Kocks, relict of one 
Pieter Kocks. The property passed into the 
hands 1 of Frederick Phillipse, into those of Abra- 
ham DePeyster, and in 
1756 into the posses- 
sion of Captain Archi- 
bald Kennedy, after- 
wards Earl of Cassilis. 
On this site the Cap- 
tain built a mansion, 
splendid for any era, 
with a great garden at 
its back. It became a 
Revolutionary mansion 
of much celebrity. Washington, for a time, made 
his headquarters here, and the house is often spoken 
of as the Washington House. Many years later, 
after it had ceased to be a private residence, it was 
Washington Hall and Washington Inn. Many brill- 
iant balls were given within these walls durmg the 
eighteenth century. In 1776 General Putnam was 
quartered in the Kennedy Mansion, hastily departing 
after the Continental defeat at the Battle of Long 
Island. Lord Howe and Sir Guy Carleton were 
here during the British occupation of New York. 
Afterwards the house became the home of Nathaniel 
Prime, the noted banker. Isaac Sears, "King Sears," 
one of the Liberty Boys, lived m it once, in his later 




WASHINGTllN HOUSE. 



NEW YORK D O W N r O W N 



years. A renowned girls' boarding school, Mrs. 
Graham's, occupied it for some time long after. It 
lasted, though but the skeleton of its former grandeur, 
until 1882, when the present structure was put up. 

No. 3 Broadway, once the Watts Mansion, has 
memories of Andre's staying there. The ground it 
stood on, now part of the Washington Building, 
was purchased by Captain Martin Cregier, sailor, 
trader with the Indians and innkeeper. It was by 
him sold very speedily to Captain Kennedy who, 
building on it, sold it in turn to his father-in-law, 
John Watts, of the Governor's Council. This was 
in 1792, and house and lot went together for $5,000. 

Nos. 5 and 7, their sites included in the tall 
Bowling Green Building, were the Robert R. Liv- 
ingston and the John Stevens houses, erected in 
1784 and 1770 (about). In what was probably the 
original building on the site of 7 Broadway, the 
Rev. Johanes Megapolensis, old New Amsterdam's 
most famous preacher, lived from 1655 to 1663, 
and owned house and lot as well. At 9 and 11, 
also the Bowling Green Building now, the Martin 
Cregier mentioned above, burgomaster, established 
one of the earliest taverns in the city, and, being a 



importance, made it pay 

was in 



public official of 
brilliantly. This 
1659. Cregier's 
very fashionable. 
Some years after 
this host had 
died a new 
building was put 
up, but the site 
was always con- 
tinued as a tav- 
ern. From 1763 
until after the 

Revolution its presiding genius was a Mrs, Steel, 
and the house was called the King's Arms Tavern. 




K E N N E D ^", WAITS, L 1 V I N ( 
AND Sr EVENS HOUSES. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



This building stood until about i860, in its last 
twelve years "the Atlantic Garden," having been 
miraculously passed over by two great fires, those 
of 1776 and 1845. It was never, says W. S. Pellet- 
reau. Burns' Coffee House, under any of its pro- 
prietorships, as has been often claimed. 

In digging the foundations for the Bowling 
Green Building, several years ago, a large number 




ATLANTIC GARDEN 



of the wooden posts of the historic *' wall " of Wall 
Street, nearly 250 years old, were found. This 
stockade not only extended across the island at 
Wall Street, but kept on down the North River 
bank, here a high bluff, to the fort. The posts 
were in good preservation. 

At this point, about i860, where the Atlantic 
Garden had stood, there were railroad yards. 

D, T. Valentine, in his Manual of 1865, in the 
course of an article on Broadway, remarks : " The 
first fashionable store was, undoubtedly, on Bowling 
Green, on the west side of Broadway." 

At 19 Broadway, the building of the sleeping 
lions on the stoop, Daniel Webster once lived. 
Peter Goelet, one of the last of the far downtown 
residents, had his home at 32. No. 34 Broadway 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



was another of the offices of Commodore Vanderbilt's. 
At 39, next to Aldrich Court, was, at the end of the 
eighteenth century, the McComb Mansion, a beau- 
tiful four story dwelling, sixty feet broad and with 
grounds running back to the Hudson. After Presi- 
dent Washington left the Franklin Mansion on Frank- 
lin Square he came to this, renting it for $2,500. 

Aldrich Court is historic and mightily so. A 
tablet on its walls tells the proud story. It is the 
authentic site of four houses or huts, the first habi- 
tations of white men on Manhattan Island. These 
were built by Adrian Block, captain and trader, 
November, 1613. Block also built the first vessel 
built by Europeans in this country, the Hestless, 
launched 16 14. 

No. 62 is recalled as still another office of 
Commodore Vanderbilt's, far back in the forties. 

Where the towering Empire Building stands at the 
corner of Rector Street there was, first, a Lutheran 
Church, built 1671, rebuilt 1741, burned in the 
fire of 1776. After it came the first Grace Church 
and its graveyard, completed in 1808, used until 
1846, when the edifice at Broadway and Eleventh 
Street was ready for worship. This day and hour 
found the site only too eagerly desired. Broadway 
at Rector Street then was the thick of the wholesale 
dry goods trade. After the building passed through 
that period it became a stock and railroad centre. 
Along on the block south of old Grace Church, 
where now a line of dingy, old-fashioned edifices are, 
there were built, after the destructive fire of 1776, 
fine private houses that lasted many years. One 
excellent hotel of that time, Bunker's Mansion 
House, was in that row, on Broadway's west side. 
These private houses were replaced around 1850 by 
the present mercantile structures. 

Valentine speaks of the slow rise of Broadway's 
east side, as regards fashion and trade. It was not 
until 1790 that it showed much improvement, he says. 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



Trinity's Church and churchyard stand on what 
was once a high bluff, as the wall along Trinity 
Place indicates. The spire and nave that now 
keep guard at the head of Wall Street are the third 
Trinity. The first church edifice was built in 1696 
and burned in the fire of 1776. The third structure 
replaced the second in 1839. The wealth of this 
corporation of Trinity, mother of nearly a dozen 
great churches of New York, comes, largely, from 
Royal grants, dating back to the early days of the 
City under English rule. In 1705, for example, 
the first Trinity just erected, the church received 
from Queen Anne the Queen's Farm (the much 
talked about Anneke Jans property), some sixty-two 
acres in all, now of immense value, lying in between 
Watts or Canal Street, Warren Street, the Broad 
Way and the river, then up to Greenwich Street. 

There are several curious and all but forgotten 
facts regarding Trinity Church and churchyard : 
Its site is the peach orchard of one Van Dyck (in 
Stuyvesant's time). Here an Indian girl was shot 
while stealing peaches, with the 
result that there was an out- 
break of the savages, over 100 
settlers being killed, 150 taken 
prisoners. At the present north- 
west corner of the churchyard 
the Van Cortland sugar house 
once stood. Back of Trinity, on 
the river front, there was a 
strong redoubt built in 1776. 

The strip of sidewalk in front 
of Trinity was, from Revolu- 
tionary days, known as the Mall 
and the Church Walk. It was 
the fashionable promenade for 
years, and stories of the beauty 
show to be seen here were told in the clubs of 
London. The tale of the dead of Trinity is no less 




I K I N I r Y C H U K C H . 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 




historic than that of the living. Alexander Hamil- 
ton rests in this churchyard, Captain James Law- 
rence, Albert Gallatin, Colonel Marinus VVillett (see 
Broad Street), William Bradford, the first New 
York printer and newspaper 
publisher (see Pearl Street). 
Trmity's earliest tombstone is 
above the dust of a Holland 
maid who died in 1639; 
its latest stones 
mark the graves 
of men who died 
during the Civil 
War. 

While until 
some years after 
that Broadway 
south of Wall 
Street kept its 

Standmg as an i.rave of Alexander Hamilton. 

exclusive r e s i - 

dence section, the abode of the conservative fashion, 
from 1796 on the section from Wall Street to The 
Fields (The Common, now City Hall Park), was 
established for trade. Some of the handsomest 
shops of town were there. Between what is now 
Cedar and Liberty Streets was the stage establish- 
ment of Carr. John Jacob Astor, the fur merchant, 
had his store between Liberty and Cortlandt Streets. 
Here, in 1815, were the dry goods stores of Sheldon 
and Beach, Abraham Bussing and William Dean. 
There was Nathaniel Smith, the perfumer. Jacobus 
Bogart, the baker, and David L. Haight. Cortlandt 
Street had been laid out in 1733. 

But the centre of social life for New York in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century was the tavern, 
The City Arms, on the corner of Stone (now 
Thames Street) and Broadway, precisely where the 
Boreel Building now stands, at number 115, on the 



OLD NEW YORK D O \\' N T O W N 



west side. Until 1754, this great house had been 
the residence of James DeLancey, once Lieutenant- 
Governor. DeLancey was the son of the Etienne 
DeLancey, who, in 1700, had built the house in 
Broad Street now known as Fraunces' Tavern. 

On April 15, 1754, the DeLancey residence on 
this site was opened as a tavern by Edward Willett, 
under the name of The Province Arms. In suc- 
ceeding years it had many titles and many landlords. 
It was, at different times, the New York Arms, the 
York Arms, the City Arms, Willetts'. The noted 
innkeeper. Burns, had it for several years, and then 
it was Burns' Tavern. The great host, Roubalet, 
managed it during another period. In some of the 
old accounts of the day it is spoken of as Burns' 
Coffee House, and in it, during this landlord's 
occupancy, on October 31, 1765, the historic Non- 
Importation Agreement, in opposition to the Stamp 
Act, was signed. 

In the days of the Revolution it was a great 
military headquarters. At all times fashion congre- 
gated here. The Washington Inaugural Ball, in 



1789, was 



CITY HO T E L, 



given here. Here, the 
finest assemblies were 
held. A garden stretched 
behind the house down to 
the river. Thames Street 
was then the carriage way 
to the stables. In 1793, 
the mansion was torn 
down, and in 1806 the 
Tontine City Tavern or 
City Hotel replaced it, to 
be demolished in its turn, 
in 1850, to make way for 
shops. 

At 142 was Webb's 
Congress Hall. In the centre of Broadway, opposite 
Liberty Street, in 1789, there was the "Uptown 




3^<~»« 



OLD NEW 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



Market," for the wealthy, a building 42 by 25. The 
corner-stone of St. Paul's Church was laid in 1764, 
the steeple put on in 1794. Thus, St. Paul's is, by 
far, an older edifice than the present Trinity. Its 
rear faces Broadway, the intention being at its 
building to have the front face the river. 

The Chemical Bank was once where the 
Park Bank now has its stand. Barnum 
opened his museum on 
the corner of Broadway 
and Ann Street in 1842. 
Before that, there was 
a dry goods store on 
this site, the store of 
Jothan Smith, the A. 
T. Stewart of his day. 
The sidewalks of Broad- 
way ended at Vesey 
Street, in 1789. On 
the Astor House site 
there was first a Dro- 
vers' Inn and a race 
course. Then some noble mansions rose, those of 
John Jacob Astor, David Lydig and John G. Coster. 
The Astor House was built in 1836, and its rates 
were the then prodigious sum of a dollar a day. 
Daniel Webster was one of this hostelry's most 
noted guests. 

Beyond the Astor House block there was in 
early days a rope walk along the country road that 
later became Broadway. At the north corner of 
Park Place, then Robinson Street, the General Soci- 
ety of Mechanics and Tradesmen erected in 1803 
their first building, Mechanics Hall. Phillip Hone 
lived on Broadway near Park Place. The corner 
of Murray Street was distinguished by Barden's 
Tavern, 

In 1766 the street ended in Ranelagh Gardens, 
pleasure grounds of that era. Another garden, the 




PAUL'S CHAPEL. 



OLD NEW \' O R K DOWNTOWN 

de la Montague, with its public house, the headquar- 
ters of the Liberty Boys, was situated on Broadway, 
opposite the Park, at about the same time. Around 
1840, Peale's Museum was built on this site. Peale's 
Museum was the successor of Scudder's Museum, 
that occupied the old Alms House in the Park and 
was the first of its kind in the city. Contoit Gar- 
dens and the Parthenon were opposite The Fields, 
too, in what was then Upper Bro«lway. 

The greatest changes in Broadway were begun 
in 1850. There appeared to be a sudden move by 
retail shopkeepers, and Broadway was given the 
preference. A. T. Stewart may have had some 
influence in setting the fashion. The year was 
especially notable for the number of Broadway 
private residences demolished. 

Broadway was then the fashionable promenade. 
No street of the present day quite takes the 
place it held in that respect. On pleasant days it 
was frequently crowded with persons who made the 
most pretense in fashion and society. It was the 
custom to stroll down the street in the last hours of 
the afternoon to the Battery. 

Barnum's museum, said to be the first granite 
building erected in New York, stood where the St. 
Paul building now towers. The old museum was five 
or six stories high, and a gloomy structure, although 
the numerous colored banners, always arrayed 
across the front, gave it a bizarre appearance. 
There was no Post Office; the City Hall Park occu- 
pied all the space preempted by that department 
and Mail Street, and it was enclosed by a high iron 
fence. Looking down Park Place, the buildings and 
attractive grounds of Columbia College could be 
seen by the pedestrian on Broadway. On the cor- 
ner of Chambers Street, Stewart's marble store was 
one of the sights of the town. 

N. P. Willis was one who did much to celebrate 
Broadway in verse. In a note to one of his " City 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



Lyrics," he says that the poet starts from the Bowl- 
ing Green to take his sweetheart up to Thompson's 
for an ice, or (if she is inclined for more) ices. The 
verse runs : 

Come out, love — the night is enchanting 

The moon hangs just over Broadway 
The stars are all lighted and panting — 

(Hot weather up there, I dare say ) 
'Tis seldom that " coolness " entices 

And love is no better for chilling — 
But come up to Thompson's for ices 

And cool your warm heart for a shilling. 

The crowd going home on foot late in the after- 
noon was one of the sights in those days. It was 
the custom with William B. Astor to walk to and 
fro daily ; his brother often accompanied him. 
William CuUen Bryant walked down Broadway in 
the morning on his way to the Evening Post, of 
which he was editor, and up in the afternoon on 
the way home. Horace Greeley often attracted 
notice. James Fennimore Cooper came down from 
Cooperstown for his last visit to the city in the 
spring of 1850, and was then a notable figure on 
Broadway. Edwin Forrest took his constitutional 
daily here, when in town. Abram S. Hewitt used 
to go on foot down to the old stand, No. 17 Burl- 
ing Slip, in those days. During the pleasant 
weather of the mild months Broadway always 
presented an animated appearance from morning 
until evening. 

Perhaps the seven lines of omnibuses made the 
street seem more crowded and lively than now even. 
When there were heavy rains, Broadway was not 
inviting. The mud was thick and deep. At every 
curb stood the crossing-sweep, who solicited alms — 
sometimes a specimen of Dickens's Poor Joe, or a 
young girl in rags, and all sorts of the submerged 
class. In winter after a snow-storm, the deep ruts 
in the street made pitfalls for stage-horses. Fre- 
quently, however, the snowfall was sufficiently heavy 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

to make good sleighing for a day or two. Then 
Broadway was a lively thoroughfare indeed. This 
was one of the sights that astonished Thackeray. 
Sleighs large enough to accommodate two dozen 
or more persons would pick up passengers as the 
"buses" did until a "straw party" was formed. 
Then there was great hilarity — and snowballing all 
through the ride. The snow was not hauled away 
in carts as nowadays ; it was allowed to disappear 
under the influence of sun and rain. The slush of 
winter, therefore, was one of the disagreeable experi- 
ences to be dreaded. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 




OLD FEDERAL HALL BEFORE ALTERATION, 



ON WALL STREET. 



"\ A 7" ALL Street as a highway of New York is the 
^ ' creation of the EngUsh. It was no street, 
but a pahsade wall, in the old Dutch times. Not 
till Governor Dongan saw the chances of real estate 
speculation and had in mind, in 1688, what a larger 
and a constantly growing New York might be, did 
the wooden posts come down and the town begin to 
spread. 

The old wall was twelve feet high, a sloping 
breastwork on the inside. The stones from its 
bastions were used for the foundations of the new 
City Hall at the head of Broad Street upon Wall, 
in 1699, and at the beginning of the century there 
was nothing left of the fortification of Stuyvesant, 
It had been known as De Singel ofte Stadt wall 
(the Circuit or City wall). That there might be 
room for the deploying of troops inside a clear 100 
feet had been left between the wall and the nearest 
houses, and in laying out the new Wall Street, the 
shrewd Dongan took a strip of 40 feet next the 
wall and sold it for his own profit. Thus Wall 
Street became a narrow street in place of a wide one. 
But even if this noted governor was thus wily in 
manipulation, he started the development of the town. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



and Wall Street especially. The new City Hall, that 
was to replace the old Stadt Huys on Pearl Street, 
was pushed with speed. It was a noble building 
for those days. It occupied the land on the north 
side of Wall Street, from the east line of the present 
Assay Office to the west line of Nassau Street, 
covering the present Sub-Treasury site and what is 
now the beginning of Nassau Street. The jog at 
the northwest corner of Wall and Nassau Streets to- 
day is a trace of this. This jog marks the old 
passage that led around the new City Hall from 
Wall Street into Nassau. This building was sold in 
1812 to be torn down, the Sub-Treasury was built 
on its site in 1836, and Nassau Street was then 
extended through to Wall Street. 

Late in the nineteenth century it became Federal 
Hall, with many alterations, and the National Capi- 
tol, though its honor in this regard was brief. Yet 
for a time Wall Street and this particular site was 
literally the seat of government. 

The first ninety years of its life, though not, 
indeed, so full of events as its two latter decades, 
are none the less of historic interest. Here, until 
the Revolution, the State Assembly met. Here, in 
the garret, was the debtors' prison, and below there 
was a dungeon for all other prisoners. It is not 
generally known that there was no separate prison in 
New York until 1759. In the street, close to the Hall, 
stood the whipping post, cage, pillory and stocks. 

In 1 73 1 two fire engines were brought from 
London, and a room was set apart in the City Hall 
for them. Four years later, in the court room of 
this building there proceeded the first trial for the 
Liberty of the Press. Zenger, the New York editor, 
was on trial, and Governor Cosby and his council 
fought hard but unsuccessfully, to have him muzzled. 

The first library of New York, 1642 volumes, 
was housed in the City Hall in 1730. This was 
largely of a religious nature, and, much added to. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



was given the name of the " Corporation Library." 
One of the private libraries of the city really ante- 
dates this, the New York Society Library, for it is 
said to have been founded in 1700. The Society 
Library amounted to little, however, until 1754, 
when it, too, was deposited in the City Hall. 
During the Revolution the British soldiers carried 
away a large part of it, a knapsackful at a time, 
selling the books for liquor. 

From out of the Hall, on April 23, 1775, the 
Liberty Boys dragged 600 muskets, which they 
distributed. George IIL's portrait was torn down 
and trampled upon. 

As City Hall this building had stood upon 
arches, its ground floor thus of open corridors. 
When it came to making it the Capitol it was 
enlarged and embellished, its walls carried down to 
the ground. $65,000 was spent upon kl 
the remodeling, and upon its completion, 
on the famous balcony of its front, tweh 
feet deep, Washington took the oath 
office as first President of the United 
States — April 30, 1789. The statue on 
the Sub-Treasury steps marks the spot. 

By the middle of the cen- 
tury Wall Street had become 
very nearly the court end of 
the town. Later it was quite 
that. Before 1790 it was a 
beautiful avenue crowded 
with trees. Members of the 
First Congress walked up 
and down it, foreign ambassa- 
dors, the judiciary, the Presi- 
dent and his Cabinet. Alex- 
ander Hamilton's house (1769) was on the site of 
the Mechanics National Bank, ^;^ Wall Street. 
Where the Manhattan Trust Company is, at the 
corner of Wall and Nassau, was, a century ago. 




OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



' O F 
■E K R 



Simmons' fashionable tavern, where a public dinner 
was once given to Washington. 

Beyond the City Hall, towards the East River, 

and on the same side of the way, the north, were 

two notable buildings, the sugar house of the Bayard 

family and the first of the Presbyterian churches 

of New York. In 1729 the sugar house was erected 

between the Hall and the church. In 1773 it was 

turned into a tobacco manufactory. The church, 

built in 1 7 18, was on a lot of 88 foot frontage and 

124 feet in depth, and the two together must have 

taken up the entire block down to William Street. 

Washington, when he came on to New York to 

be inaugurated, landed at the 

foot of Wall Street, Murray's 

Wharf. A ferry to Brooklyn 

had been established at this 

point as early as 1629. Then 

the river came up close to the 

present joining of Wall and Pearl 

Streets, and here was the 

" Water Gate " of the Wall. A 

trifle to the south was a battery 

reaching out into the river, 

about where Front Street and 

Jones Lane now come together. 

Old New York's mercantile life almost begins 
and ends with the coffee houses, cheery places of 
refreshment and daily meeting, the forerunners of 
the dining clubs of to-day. Wall Street down by 
the river was the locality of the most representative 
of these establishments, and the slip that in 1744 
occupied the centre of the street, from Pearl to 
Water, and the bridge over it on which " vendues " 
or auctions were held, were known as Coffee House 
Slip and Coffee House Bridge. 

The earliest of the coffee houses here was the 
Merchants' Coffee House, built in 1744, where now 
is the corner of Wall and Water Streets, the south- 




W A L L STREET AND 
Y -HOUSE, 1746. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

east corner. This establishment was kept by 
Madame Ferrari, and was a favorite resort of 
captains. Later, when a new building was erected 
on the opposite cross-corner, she removed there. 

A Mein Host of the Merchants' afterwards was 
Cornelius Bradford. He established, in 1784, the 
first Marine List ever publicly kept in New York, 
and a register where "gentlemen and merchants 
were requested to enter their names and resi- 
dences," New York's first directory. 

Congress was entertained here by the Chamber 
of Commerce and the Marine Society, and the old 
coffee house lasted until the beginning of the cen- 
tury, when it was destroyed in the great fire of 1804. 

On the corner, diagonally opposite to this, the 
north-west corner, the Tontine Coffee House was 
started, on March 3, 1791. Many gentlemen were 
present at the meeting, John Broome, President of 
the Chamber of Commerce, acting as chairman, and 
the Tontine Society was formed with 203 members. 
The building was formally opened on June 5, 1793, 
with a dinner. Its cost was $43,000. At once the 
Merchants' became known as the Old Coffee House. 
The Tontine became a political as well as a busi- 
ness centre. Each member had a $200 share. The 
property was to revert to 
the seven survivors of the 
original subscribers, and it 
is said that $135,000 was 
realized when it was sold. 

Here, also, was the old -t^pwiT't'i'i. ) ( n" 
market, founded in 1709, _ T-'^ 

close to the river's edge, "" ~' ^~""*'-- 

. FOOT OF W ALLS TRKET 

moved a little higher up mto ferry-housk, .629. 

Wall Street in 1720 and 

made the public market place. It was called the 
" Meal Market," and cut meat was not sold here 
until 1740. In 1 73 1 it became the only sale-and- 
hire slave market in New York. 




OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

Under a tree, in front of the present Central 
Trust Company Building, at 60 Wall Street, on 
November 13, 1792, 24 brokers signed an agree- 
ment and founded the New York Stock Exchange. 
At first they met in each other's rooms, but later 
established the first tangible stock market in an 
upper room of the Merchants' Exchange, at Wall 
and William Streets. This Merchants' Exchange 
(on whose site is the Custom House, 1901), an im- 
portant part of early New York, was erected by the 
Merchants' Exchange Company, organized in 1824. 
The Company purchased 112 feet on the south side 
of Wall Street, four lots, and built this structure, 
three stories high, with cupola and weather vane, 
the finest in the city. The fire of 1835 destroyed 
it, and in 1836 the present building was com- 
menced, the additional lots from the old Exchange 
to William Street being bought. It was finished in 
1S42. On this corner of Wall and William had 
stood a half century to a century before Wall 
Street's great ornament, the statue of Pitt, erected in 
1770, pulled down by the British soldiery in 1776, 
because he had secured the repeal of the Stamp Act. 

The present 56 Wall Street, the white stone 
building bearing the sign : " Jacob R. Telfair," is the 
site of the house of the renowned Captain Kidd, 
wealthy man and real estate speculator, in partner- 
ship with Governor Dongan, as well as pirate, it has 
of recent years been learned. Not alone was this 
residence Captain Kidd's home, but it was also the 
first residence built on the north side of Wall Street. 

W. S. Pelletreau, one of New York's best 
authorities on old title deeds, says : " In the year 
1688 there were almost as many houses on the 
south side of Wall Street as now ; on the north side, 
not one. * * * On May 19, 1688, Governor 
Dongan sold to George Brown, maltster, a lot, be- 
ing on ye n. e. side of ye city, on ye n. e. side of ye 
street called ye Wall Street." This lot was 25 feet 



DOWNTOWN 



wide, 112 feet long on the west side, 1 1 1 on the 
east side. This was the first house lot sold on the 
north side of Wall Street, and on it George Brown 
built the first dwelling house. On May 13, 1689, 
he sold it to William Cox, merchant, for ;{J"6o. Cox 
was soon after drowned, and his widow married 
Captain William Kidd. The present building was 
erected in 1828. 

A few doors below is what is certainly the oldest 
lawyers' sign in New York, on an old building, at 
68 Wall, " Benedict, Burr and Benedict." It dates 
back very nearly to the beginning of the century. 

One of the Wall Street banks has a site genu- 
inely historic, for it has occupied it for over a hun- 
dred years. That is the first of all the banks of 
New York, the Bank of New York, that in 1798 
removed to its present site, on the north-east cor- 
ner of Wall and William Streets. It began to do 
business in the old Walton House on Pearl Street, 
near Franklin Square, but staid there only a year or 
two. 

While the Bank of North America had been 
organized in Philadelphia three years before, nothing 
could be done in New York because of the British 
occupation, A meeting was held at the Merchants' 
Coffee House on February 26, 1784, and the bank 
was set on its feet. The capital stock was half a 
million dollars in gold and silver. Alexander 
Hamilton was one of its chief projectors. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 




IN BROAD STREET. 



OLD 



YORK D O W N T O W N 



BROAD STREET AND THE 
CANAL. 

r^OR memories of the old Dutch days of New 
'^ Amsterdam, for landmarks and sites of the 
earliest mercantile doings of the city, there is no 
better street than the "Gracht," the Broad Street 
of today. Before there was this highway there was 
practically no New Amsterdam. But it was many 
a long year before it was a street in the ordinary 
sense. A natural inlet ran along its present course 
from the strand where Pearl Street now crosses it, 
very nearly up to the present corner of Wall and 
Broad. The Dutch merchants turned this into a 
canal, boarding up its banks, and put docks at its 
river end. By 1696, the WET Docks at the outlet 
of this canal were notable features of New York's 
commerce. The inlet proper only came up to Beaver 
Street; it was more of a ditch beyond. In 1660 the 
ways on either side were paved, and these banks 
were lined with houses. 

Along Broad Street, Mrs. Schuyler Van Rens- 
selaer says, the first 
church in New Amster- 
dam was built. About 
here was in the very 
earliest days a marsh, 
Blommaert's Valley, 
New York's first 
"Swamp," and here 
gathered the first tan- 
ners and bootmakers. 
The lots on both sides 
of the canal were origi- 
nally granted, by Stuyvesant, to Domine Samuel 
Drissius, officiating clergyman of the Dutch Church, 
and the titles trace back to his heirs. These lands 




THE F. X t: H A N f. E , F ( ) O T 
STREET. 



OLD NEW- 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



adjoined the farm of Jan Jansen Daman north of 
the present line of Wall Street and between Broad- 
way and William. 

On the bridge that crossed the ditch at the 
Exchange Place of to-day the first exchange of the 
little city was informally established in March, 1670. 
the merchants meeting there every Friday morning 
between the hours of eleven and twelve. " Governor 
Lovelace bade the Mayor see to it that during that 
hour boys should not coast down the hill from 
Broadway and make havoc with mercantile legs and 
feelings." (See Stone Street.) This point was the 
head of navigation on the ditch, and on the north- 
east corner what is said to have been the original 
Brooklyn ferry house stood. On the northwest 
corner was a market (established 17 1 1), 
and east and west, under the lee of 
the above mentioned hill, the 
land was known in the earliest 
times as the " Sheep Pas- 
ture." 

The intersection of Broad 
and Pearl Streets (the canal 
was filled in late in the seven- 
teenth century) marks the site of the city's first 
genuine exchange, the Royal Exchange, much 
spoken of in old records. It probably stood 
precisely in the centre of the roadway, then (1752) 
close to the East River's edge. Built on the site 
of an old market house in this year, it speedily 
became the great meeting place of merchants. It 
was a building on arches that seem (later ou) to 
have been enclosed. Above the arches was a hall 
60 by 30 and 14 feet high, arching to 20 feet high, 
and the structure was surmounted by a cupola. 

In 1752 the lower story was used as a coffee 
house and the room above as a ball room. The 
first plays that New York ever saw are said to have 
been produced here. Then the Chamber of Com- 




36 



NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



merce hired this upper room from 1770 to 1795, and 
during the Revolution the building was used as a 
market by the British. In 1795 ^^e Tammany 
Society took the upper room for a museum. In 
1799 the old building was torn down. 

Almost cheek by jowl with it, yet standing, 
probably the most distinguished landmark in New 
>^ _„ York to-day, was, and is, 




I'ltl i;1 1.1 111 



f..'h-- ti-T' ^''-"i 'EJ ^ W 'SH 
_ ilk l"i.M&i:Sf. 



^I Sin 1 15 r. 







F K A II N C E S ' TAVERN, B K O A D AND F E A K I. STREETS. 

Fraunces' Tavern, originally Etienne De Lancey's 
town house, built 1700, and taken in 1762 by Samuel 
Fraunces, afterwards Washington's steward. Here 
the Chamber of Commerce organized (in 1770) and 
held their early meetings. Once in its career Fraun- 
ces' Tavern was known as the Queen's Head ; but 
its memory of Washington is the leading chapter in 
its history, and the tale is told in a tablet on its walls. 
" Fraunces' Tavern — To this building General 
George Washington came Evacuation Day, Novem- 
ber 25, 1783, and on Thursday, December 4th 
following, took leave of the principal officers of the 
army yet in service. Erected by the Sons of the 
Revolution." 

" Washington's Long Room '' here still continues 
to be shown to visitors. The Tavern is on the 
north-east corner of Broad and Pearl Streets. 

Opposite the Royal Exchange, its precise site 
not yet identified, stood the King's Arms Tavern 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

(1733-1763), kept by Mrs. Steel and by the omni- 
present Burns. On the north-west corner of Broad 
and Beaver Streets, the Morris Building site, has 
been placed a tablet in honor of Colonel Marinus 
Willett, subsequently of the Continental Line, after- 
wards Mayor of New York, who, on January 23, 
1775, at the head of a body of " Sons of Liberty," 
compelled a detachment of regulars to surrender a 
quantity of arms siezed by them at the Battery. 
Willett then armed his own troops with these 
weapons. 

In 1869 the Stock Exchange moved to its 
present site. There are traditions of two exchanges, 
in this vicinity, after the second of which Exchange 
Place got its name. The first, spoken of as the 
New Exchange, is said to have been located some- 
where near the corner of Broad Street and Exchange 
Place. The second is said to have stood (built in 
1825) upon the block bounded by Wall, Broad and 
Exchange Place, fronting on Wall, extending 
through to Exchange. This may, however, have 
been confused with the Merchants' Exchange on 
Wall Street, built about the same time, which 
certainly stood on the Wall Street block below (see 
Wall Street). 



OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 














BROAD 



A N D E X C H A N 1 



PLACE, A I! o l' T I 6 S O . 



EXCHANGE PLACE— VERLET- 
TENBERG. 

^1 7 HERE Exchange Place now climbs to Broad- 
' way, there was, at the beginnings of things 

in New York, the highest hill in the vicinity, and on 
it a fort of logs and earth, Verlettenberg. The 
English called the hill Flatten Barrack, said by 
some to have referred to the tan yards reported to 
have been on the site of what is now Exchange 
Court. The road that was the first of this street 
was called " T'Schaape Waytre," the " lane to the 
Sheep Pasture." In i6gi this name had become 
Tuyen Straat, and later it was Garden Street. 

Gardens then skirted it on either side. Much 
of its history has already been told in the notes on 
Broad Street. But there are two other interesting 
points about it. Until the year 1832 it was even 
narrower than it is now. From the earliest days it 
was the street of one of the most important build- 
ings in New York. 

This was the first Dutch church to be built out- 
side the Fort, the South Reformed Church, known as 
the " Old Dutch Church," built in 1693, destroyed in 
the fire of 1835. ^^ stood on the site now covered 
by the rear part of the Mills Building and probably 
considerably further to the eastward as well. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 




A I) r T C H HOUSE. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



PEARL STREET AND THE OLD 
DUTCH TOWN. 

|\T0 New York street has had a more varied exist- 
'^ ^ ence than Pearl, none, a greater measure of 
history, none, more names. It was the first Fifth 
Avenue, though then but a short block in length, 
the first residence street. The first New Yorkers 
that lived anywhere, except in scattered huts, or in 
the Fort, built their homes substantially on the then 
Perel Straat, from the present State to Whitehall 
Street, on the beach, literally, facing the river and 
the bay. Here was Aunt Metje Wessel's tavern, 
and, as Pearl Street grew, keeping by the river side, 
it had many important buildings put on it, chief of 
them all, the old Stadt Huys, the pioneer City Hall. 

By 1728 it had stretched out until it reached the 
Bowery Road, the present Park Row, as a map of 
the period shows. The latter end of this was, how- 
ever, little more than a country road. Its course 
to-day is its old course. It curves now as it curved 
then, having been first a beach and then a path 
that wound around the foot of a hill. It was Perel 
Straat and Pearle Straat for but a block at first, 
then Dock Street to what is now Hanover Square, 
at that point The Slip (Old Slip to-day), beyond 
that Great Queen Street. Hanover Square was 
laid out in 1728. The city's old Custom House was 
on Dock Street. Even as late as 1790 Pearl Street 
was so narrow that sidewalks were forbidden. 

By 1728 some of the water front had been 
reclaimed, docks built, and Pearl Street had com- 
menced to step inland, as it were. But how close 
it was to the water originally may be guessed 
from the fact that wooden sheathing (The Schoey- 
inge) was put up on the beach between 1654 and 



OLD N E W 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



riiiiir"' 




r A D r H r V s . 



1656 to protect the Stadt Huys and other buildings 
from the " inroads of the waves." 

The Stadt Huys, whose site is marked now by 
a plain commercial building, 
on Pearl Street at the head 
of Coenties Slip, on the south- 
ern corner of Coenties Lane, 
where the Third Avenue 
Elevated sharply turns (there 
is a tablet above the second 
story), was altogether a nota- 
ble Dutch structure. Built originally as a tavern 
or harberg, the only house of public entertainment 
of the day, it was made into a City Hall in 1653. 
and continued in that capacity till 1699, when the 
new Hall was built on Wall Street. Then the old 
building was sold at public outcry for 920 shillings. 
It was four stories high and boasted a cupola. 
There were gardens at its back, in front a cage, a 
whipping post and a public well. On the beach 
close at hand was a battery of 15 guns. Coenties 
Slip, a little inlet in the Stadt Huys' day, was named 
after Conraet Ten Eyck, and nick-named 
Coentje. It was filled in in 1835. At 







Coenties 
Slip, 1728, 
was the 
Fish Mar- 
ket. 
In May, 
1690, the first Continental Con- 
giess, almost forgotten now, 
assembled in the Stadt Huys 
at the call of Jacob Leisler, the 
colonies of New York, Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth 
and Maryland being repre- 
sented, to consult as to measures of mutual protec- 
tion. This Congress voted to raise an army of 




lENTIES SLIP IN THE 
DITCH TIMES. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

850 men to invade Canada, to repel the French. 
At 81 Pearl Street is the site of the first print- 
ing press in New York, established by William 
Bradford of Philadelphia, and where the Cotton 
Exchange stands Bradford founded the first New 
York newspaper, the New York Gazette (Nov. 8, 
1725). A marble tablet at 88 Pearl Street com- 
memorates the fire of 1835, when in this vicinity 
402 buildings were destroyed. 

TJANOVER SQUARE, named in honor of 
^ ^ George I. of the house of Hanover, less 
than almost any other part of Old New York, could 
have substantial memories of the past in the way of 
buildings, for the city's greatest fire, that of 1835, 
wiped it out absolutely. There was much else that 
went up in flames then, but Hanover Square was the 
centre of the conflagration, the fire having started 
but a block away. In 1765 it had become a centre 
of shops, and at the time of the fire the Square 
and Pearl Street were the great dry goods mart, the 
Twenty-third Street of the hour, the haunt of fash- 
ionable purchasers and of crowds of ladies. 

It is said, in a " History of 
the Commerce of the City and 
the Port of New York," speak- 
ing of the great demand for 
business places after the fire, 
when new warehouses and 
shops had been put up, "The 
enormous rents demanded for 
dry goods stores in Pearl 
Street caused the merchants to 
leave that thoroughfare and go into other streets." 

About 1840, the auction trade centred on Pearl 
Street in the vicinity of Wall. 

At what is now the foot of Cedar Street in 
Pearl Street stood once the DePeyster House, of 
Washington memories. 




1 L D - I : M E DWELLING 
H O I' S E . 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

CRANKLIN SQUARE was at first named Cow 
* Foot Hill. Afterwards it was St. George 
Square. Here, at the corner of Cherry Street, 
was the Franklin House, the home of Washington 
in 1789, when he was inaugurated President, built 
in 1762-1770 by Walter Franklin, merchant — one 
of the finest of New York dwellings. But in archi- 
tectural glory, it was far surpassed by a building 
nearby, the Walton House (its site 324 Pearl Street). 
This beautiful mansion finally became a tenement. 
It was in its glory when Pearl Street here was 
known as Great Queen Street and " was an aristo- 
cratic quarter, when its gardens reached down to 
the East River." 

" Its richness of furniture, its gold plate and its 
magnificent entertainments were quoted in Parlia- 
ment as an excuse for taxing the American colonies. 
Howe, Clinton and Andre had passed through these 
doorways, and a future king of England had danced 
a minuette here with the fairest of New York's reb- 
el daughters." 

Here, as has been said, in this famous house, 
the Bank of New York had its first quarters, in 
1784. 

DEAVER STREET was a brook and the " Bea- 
*—^ vers' Path" at first. It was probably the first 
fur mart. Its second block, from Broad to William, 
was called Princes Street. Here, the street ended, 
up to the fire of 1835. ^^^ present line beyond this 
largely follows Exchange Street, destroyed in the 
fire, practically the old Slaughter House Lane and 
Sloat Lane (1728). A very interesting relic of the 
past consists of twelve mill stones set in the pave- 
ment of the area in rear of numbers 38 and 40. 
There were fourteen of these old stones, but two 
were taken up in 1894 and donated to the Synagogue 
Shearith Israel, and are now contained in their 
Tabernacle in uptown New York. 



OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



The building at 8 South William Street stands 
on the site of an old mill, which in 1729 was also 
used as a Synagogue by Portuguese Jews. These 
stones were brought from Holland long before that 
time and undoubtedly are the first mill stones used 
in America. 



OOUTH STREET is comparatively modern, 
^ though its buildings between Whitehall and 
Broad until recently were the finest specimens of 
purely Dutch architecture remaining. They were not 
known to have historic interest, however. MOORE 
STREET was once called W^eigh House Street^. 
BRIDGE STREET was so named because of a 
bridge across the canal, and NEW STREET be- 
cause it was the first street opened by the British. 

At the present 
corner of 
WHITEHALL 
and State Streets, 
two centuries and 
a half ago, on the 
edge of the river, 
Peter Stuyvesant 
built a handsome 
house for himself 
that he called 

"The Whitehall." old bridge and dock, Whitehall slip. 

Whitehall Street, 

also known as Shop Street, was once the open land 
on the land side of the fort. Burns, in 1763, kept a 
tavern. The King's Head, on Whitehall Street. The 
southern portion of the land the Produce Exchange 
is built on, at the corner of Stone Street, is the site 
of the original house of Frederick Phillipse, the 
richest man in New Amsterdam. The property 
remained in his family to Revolutionary times, and 
was then confiscated. The northern portion of the 
Produce Exchange land was covered by the houses 




OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



of Anthony Allard and Captain John Lasher, among 
others. The grants date back to 1646. Captain 
Lasher's houses stood on the corner of Beaver and 
Whitehall. 

TJANOVER STREET 
'^ ^ includes Merchants' 
Street, at No. 25 of which 
the fire of 1835 started. 
This point was about 35 
feet south-east of the Cus- 
tom House, corner Ex- 
change Place and Hanover 
Street. 




F I K E OF 



835- 



M 



ARKETFI EL D 



Marketfield Steige or Marketfield Lane. The 
western portion of the street has been covered by 
the Produce Exchange. The eastern part still exists, 
one of the few Dutch streets of New York that have 
never been widened. It was so named because it 
led from the Marckvelt, and was also called Petticoat 
Lane. The first Huguenot Church was built here 
in 1628. 



OTONE STREET— At first Hoogh Straat, then 
^ Brouwer Straat, from Whitehall to Broad, 
Duke Straat, from Broad to William. Mrs. Earle 
says there was a bridge across the canal here, and that 
on this bridge the merchants met in 1670, making 
this the earliest exchange (see Broad Street). 
Brouwer Straat had residences that were fine for 
that time upon it. Stone Street got its name from 
being the first street to be paved in New York 
(1657), owing to the insistence of one of its resi- 
dents, the wife of Herr Van Cortlandt, the brewer. 
Next door but one to the brewery, on this street, 
between Whitehall and Broad, in 1642, Adam 
Roelantsen established the first school. 



OLD NEW ^- O R K DO W X T O W X 



WILLIAM STREET. 

T^HE Glassmakers' Street was, perhaps, VVilliam 
* Street's earliest name, and a large part of it 
again, later on, Smee's Street, then Smythe's, then 
Smith Street. By the latter name that portion 
south of Wall was familiarly known for many years. 
What is now South William Street was, back in the 
old city, Mill Street, Horse and Cart Lane and 
Dirty Lane. It was not until some years later that 
Mill Street, or South William, was cut through to 
join William. It originally turned off at a right 
angle into Duke (Stone) Street, this bit of roadway 
yet remaining. In Mill Street the Portuguese Jews 
built their first synagogue in 1729. Its site is back 
of 3S Beaver Street. A tanner's bark mill was 
near by. 

Some authorities have it that William Street, 
and not South William, was called Horse and Cart 
Street, and that this should be street and not lane. 
In a loft at 120 Horse and Cart Street or Lane, at 
all events, the present old John Street Methodist 
Church, the pioneer and still standing, was organ- 
ized, according to Hemstreet, in 1697. 

Into the building of the old Corn Exchange, 
Beaver and William Streets, the Stock Exchange 
came in 1853. Delmonico came to his present site 
in 1835. In 1832 he had moved to 23 William 
Street, and had been burned out there (see below). 
At the entrance to the new Delmonico Building, east 
front, two pillars stand. These are of unusual 
interest as there is good authority for believing 
them to have been taken from the ruins of a Roman 
villa at Pompeii. On William Street, opposite old 
Sloate Lane, that is, almost next to the Corn 
Exchange Building, stood practically the last of the 
genuinely old Dutch buildings not swept away by 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

the fire of 1835, at once the store and home of the 
old-time merchants. It bore on its front, in spread- 
ing letters, the date, " 1690." 

Between 1857-60 the Stock Exchange was in old 
Lord's Court, William and Exchange Place. On 
one of the Exchange Place corners (then Garden 
Street) three-quarters of a century ago, in an unpre- 
tentious brick building, was the Post Office. Close 
by here (in 1735) was the Black Horse Tavern, the 
centre of Dutch social life. William Street here, 
under its name of Smith Street, in 1789, was a street 
of dry goods and milliners' shops. 

On William Street, between John and Fulton, 
Washington Irving was born. On the east side of 
the street, a few doors south of Fulton, Delmonico 
started his career, opening a bake shop there in 
1823. The north-west corner of Fulton and John 
Streets (a bronze tablet is on the building) was 
the scene on January 18, 1770, of the first blood 
shed in the Revolution, five years before it actually 
began, a struggle between the British regulars of 
the 1 6th Foot and the Sons of Liberty. This is 
known in history as the fight of Golden Hill. 
Golden Hill itself lies in the centre of the two 
blocks bounded by Maiden Lane, William, Fulton 
and Pearl Streets. 

On the east side of William Street, between Ful- 
ton and John, there are two very old houses of the 
early English order. Quite possibly these may now 
be the oldest houses in New York. They are built 
of bricks imported probably before bricks were 
made hereabouts. They adjoin and are numbered 
122 and 126 William Street. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



NASSAU STREET AND THE 
ENGLISH TOWN. 

jy' IP'S LANE, after Isaac Kip, was the forerun- 
^^ ner of Nassau Street. Later it became the 
Pye Woman's Street, and in 1696 Tunis de Kay 
presented a petition for a "carte way" along it, 
which, when complete, was christened after the 
Prince of Orange and Nassau. 

Its most notable resident, probabh% was Aaron 
Burr, who, in 1789, is said to have lived on this 
street, just back of Federal Hall. In a room, whose 
exact location is not determined, but that is known 
to have belonged to the estate of Rip Van Dam 



and to have been on Nas- 
was New York City's 
opened in 1740, 27 years 
time of the noted John 
house. Where the M u- 
Building is now was from 
die Dutch Church, made 
prison by the British in 
afterwards by the British 
officers as a 
riding acad- 
emy , re- 
stored in 
I 790, the 
New York 
Post Office 
from 1845 
to 1875, 
and taken 




sau Street, 

first theatre, 

before the 

Street p 1 a y- 

t u a 1 Life's 

1729 the Mid- 

a military 

1776, used 



THE MIDDLE DUICH CHl^RCH, 



down in 

1882. Opposite it was the Middle Dutch School, 
and opposite it, too, in 1795, the New York Society 
Library moved. 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



On the north-east corner of Nassau and Fulton 
was built before the Revolution the Shakespeare 
Tavern, a structure of yellow bricks and dormer 
windows, with a niche on 
the Nassau Street side con- 
taining a large bust of 
Shakespeare. Thomas 
Hodgkinson, an actor, 
bought this tavern in 1808, 
and made it a resort of the 
day. Here, on August 25, 
1824, the Seventh Regiment 
was organized. 

The southwest corner of 

Beekman and Nassau, now 

Temple Court, was in 1830 

Clinton Hall, the first home of the Mercantile 

Library, which had then been in existence five years. 




SHAKRSPEAKE TA\'ERN. 



piNE STREET took its name from the trees on 
*■ Jan Jansen Damen's farm just north of the " wall." 
One Tienhoven had inherited some of these acres, 
and when the street was laid out in 1693 it was called 
Tienhoven Street. Captain Kidd and Governor 
Dongan had a profitable real estate deal on here, 
the land concerned being that now covered by the 
Lancashire Insurance Building at 25 Pine Street. 

Before it became Pine, however, this street was 

known as Queene (1695) and King (1728) Near 

Broadway, it had a famous tavern, 

Walter Heyer's, and here the Gen- 

gj^- eral Society of Mechanics and 

Tradesmen was founded (see 




Broadway). 

Facing the rear of the present 
Sub-Treasury was a French 
Church, built here in 1704. The 
French Huguenots, as already 
told, had established their first sanctuarv on Mar- 



FRENCH I H I Is 
PINE SIR I-: F, T . 



N E W YORK DO W N T O W N 




UGAR HOUSE IN LIBER IV 
STREET. 



ketfield Street. In 1697, they bought a burial 
ground, " far out of town " (Pnie, Cedar and Nas- 
sau Streets), and built their second church upon 
this site seven years later. 

The trees named CEDAR STREE 1', too, though 
it was once Little Queen Street Jefferson, at one 
time, had his home there. 
On LIBERTY STREET 
(Crown Street in pre 
Revolutionary days) there 
was the old Livingston 
sugar house. Long be- 
fore that, in Dutch times, 
on the rise of ground some- 
where between William 
and Nassau Streets, called 
Catiniut Hill, there were 
the pleasuring grounds of Barberrie's Garden. At 
Liberty Street, in 1822 (the yellow fever year), 
a high board fence is said to have been stretched 
across the island as a quarantine measure. 

/VA AIDEN LANE was the Maagde Paatje, the 
iVl "Maiden's Path," "marked by a gentle 
stream,'' where the Dutch damsels came to wash their 
clothes and spread it out on the meadows. Maiden 
Lane was, too, the southern boundary of New York's 
second " Swamp," extending to Fulton and Pearl 
Streets (in 1677), and within 160 feet of the Heere 
Street (Broadway). At the foot of Maiden Lane 
was a salt meadow. A blacksmith settled himself 
on the edge of this salt meadow, and the locality 
became known as the " Smith's V'lei," or the 
Smith's Valley. V'lei was corrupted to Fly, and 
the market established at the foot of the street, in 
later days (it was pulled down in 1823) was known 
as the Fly Market. 

For a time Maiden Lane seems to have been 
called Oswego Street. John Austin Stevens places 



NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



the Oswego Market on Maiden Lane, between 
Broadway and Nassau Street, from 1771 to 18 10, 




METHODIST CHURCH 
JOHN STREET. 



JOHN STREET'S historical fame rests, in great 
^ part, upon its Methodist Church and its Theatre. 
The church is still standing, the last of the Protestant 
churches to linger downtown, a steepleless struc- 
ture, of chapel-like design, at 44 John Street, almost 
opposite the little lane called 
Dutch Street, that runs 
through from Fulton, be- 
tween Nassau and William. 
This congregation has been 
about 200 years in existence 
(see William Street), The 
church edifice itself, the 
cradle of Methodism in 
America, was erected in 
1768, rebuilt in 18 17, rebuilt 
again in 1841. It was long 
known as the First Methodist Church. Within 
these walls Whitefield used to " preach like a 
lion.'' 

The John Street Theatre, one of the most noted 
in the annals of the American stage, opened Decem- 
ber 7, 1767, was located at the present numbers, 
17, 19, 21. It was of wood, a building red in 
color, 60 feet back from the street, and was reached 
by a covered way at 17. There is even now, unless 
recently destroyed, an arcade somewhat correspond- 
ing to the old covered way at this number. The 
opening piece was Farquhar's " Stratagem," per- 
formed by " The American Company." The theatre 
was closed in 1774, and did not resume its career 
as a playhouse until after the Revolution, though 
during the British occupation amateurs performed 
in it, giving it the name of the Theatre Royal. The 
house's last night was January 12, 1798, and the 
building was almost immediately torn down. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



John Street was at first an alley along the \"an 
der Clyff tract to the river. Pelletreau says that it 
was called Van Cliff Street in early times. It was 
finally named after John Harpendingh. (For de- 
tails Golden Hill see William Street.) 

Fair Street, east of Broadway, Partition Street 
west, Were the early names of FULTON STREET. 
Up to very nearly a quarter of a century ago the North 
Reformed Church stood on the north-west corner of 
this street and William. The place of the Noon- 
Day Prayer Meeting almost commemorates its site. 
Actually the old church's site came only to the east 
wall of the present commercial building the Prayer 
Meeting is lodged in. At the south-west corner of 
Water Street there was built in 1823 the present 
United States Hotel, famous in its day for the 
entertaining of foreign merchants and sea captains. 

A historic memory of ANN STREET is that in 
1786 the Society of Peruke Makers and Hair 
Dressers had their meetings at No. 22. 
BEEKMAN STREET'S all important site 
is that of the St. George building on the 
north side just west of Clifif Street and 
next to the shot tower. Here was St. 
George's, now on Stuyvesant Square, the 
old church built in i8ri, burned in 1814, 
rebuilt two years later. GOLD STREET 
went under several names in early times. 
A map of 1728 shows that from 
Crown Street to Golden Hill it 
was Rutger's Hill, from Golden 
Hill to Fair Street, Vandercliff 
Street, from Fair Street into the 
Swamp, Gold Street. THE 
SWAMP was known as Best- 
aver's Swamp in 1640, as Beek- 
man's Swamp in 1728, as Cripple Bush in 1773. 
PECK SLIP boasted of a primitive ferry to Brook- 
lyn very early in the settlement of New York. The 




GEORGES CHLRCH 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



ferryman was a near-by farmer, and the horn, that 
summoned him when anyone wanted to cross, hung 
on a tree. 

SPRUCE STREET was, in 1785, George Street. 
FRANKFORT STREET was named after 
Jacob Leisler's native town, JACOB STREET 
after Leisler himself. Where CLIFF STREET 
is now, Dirck Van der Clyff had an orchard. The 
street was opened November 13, 1686. The first 
Baptist Church of New York was located on the 
west side of this street, 90 feet north of John. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 



CITY HALL PARK AND THE WEST 
SIDE. 

r^lTY HALL PARK was the Common, The 
^-^ Fields, De Vlache, The Flat, the common 
pasture. Its upper portion was once a potter's 
field, tradition emphatically states. But one vestige 
of the very old tangibly remains to sight, however, 
the historic Debtors' Prison. 

This is at the Brooklyn Bridge entrance, the 
present Hall of Records. Until the middle of the 
eighteenth century criminals and debtors were con- 
fined in the old City Hall on Wall Street. In 1756 
an Act of Assembly made possible the erection of a 
jail, and a trio of gloomy structures soon strung 
along across the open. 

The centre of these was the poorhouse (on the 
present City Hall site), built in 1735 ; towards 
Broadway was the Bridewell, built 1775; to the 
east this Debtors' gaol (three stories with a cupola 
atop). The latter was also spoken of as the New 
Jail, and during the Revolution it was used as a 
military prison, under the brutal Marshal Cunning- 
ham, and called the Provost. In 1830 it was cut 
down a story and encased in new outer walls. 

The City Hall of to-day was built between 1803- 
1812, and then the Park was fenced in, an iron 
fence taking the place of the wooden one in 1822, 
with gates and four high stone columns, where the 
Post Office is now. On the site of the Court House 
was once the New York Institute. A Liberty Pole 
stood on this common just before Revolutionary 
times, and there, where it was called the Parade 
(Ground, the Declaration of Independence was read 
to the troops of Washington, July 9, 1776. 

From the fountain (it was on the Post Office 
site) Croton water first sprang with a great celebra- 



OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



tion on October 15, 1842, a column 60 feet high. 
The statue of Nathan Hale on Broadway here does 
not seem to mark a locality. Hale was probably 
hanged in the orchard of the Rutgers' Homestead 
on the block bounded by Clinton, Rutgers, Madison 
and Cherry Streets, not on the Commons. 

DARK ROW has a bit of history all to itself. 
^ The celebrated Park Theatre was here, 200 
feet north of Ann Street. It was built in 1798, 
opened on January 29, of that year. In 1826, in 
the Park Theatre, the Garcia Troupe gave New 
York its first taste of Italian opera. Mile. Garcia, 
afterwards known as Malibran, appeared, the piece 
being " The Barber of Seville." 

"THEATRE ALLEY 
•^ at the back of 
this site gets its name 
logically. On the 
point of land where 
the Times Building 
stands was, from 1768 
to 1854, the Brick 
Presbyterian Church, 
on a lot known as the 
" Vineyard." 

Martling's Tavern 
was on the Tribune 
Building's site. Here, 
Tammany Hall was 
organized, 1789. 
Where the Sun office 
is to-day Jacob Leisler, 
the head of the " Committee of Safety," is said to 
have been executed in 1691. Much of the land to 
the east of here was his. Tammany Hall was built 
here in 181 1. French's Hotel stood on the World 
Building's ground. 




TAMMANY HALL, 



56 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

Anneke Jans' Farm, which had its southern 
boundary at about Warren Street, its northern at 
Canal or Watts, and ran from the Heere Weg to 
the river line, was sold to Governor Lovelace in 
1670. Thereupon it became the " Duke's Farm." 
When Queen Anne stepped upon the throne this 
property, which had been confiscated and was then 
known as the " Queen's Farm," was, with the 
" Company's Farm " (the old grant to the West 
India Company adjoining it on the south), given 
over to Trinity Corporation, all to be thenceforth 
styled the " Church Farm." 



\ 17 ARREN and GREENWICH STREETS. In 
^ ^ this vicinity were located, early in the century, 
the Bowling Green Gardens, later and for many 
years the renowned Vauxhall Gardens. MURRAY 
STREET was named after John Murray, one of the 
original trustees of the New York Free School 
Society, 1806. PARK PLACE (then Robinson 
Street), from 1754 to 18 16 ran only one block, 
Columbia (King's) College grounds embracing the 
blocks between Barclay, Murray, West Broadway 
and Church Street during these years. BARCLAY 
STREET was given its name from the Rev. Henry 
Barclay, second rector of Trinity. On the corner of 
Church Street stands the oldest Catholic church in 
New York, St. Peter's, a classic pile. 



\ /"ESEY STREET gets its title from the Rev. 
^ William Vesey of Trinity. On the north-west 
corner of Vesey and Greenwich is an old stone 
building that was once a lighthouse. Washington 
Market here was originally Bear Market. When it 
was built in 1833 the water came up to its doors. 
It was also known as Country Market, Fish Market 
and Exterior market. 



OLD 



YORK DOWNTOWN 



TTRINITY PLACE and CHURCH STREET 
* (from Rector to Liberty) were once Lumber 
Street. Their present names, as did that of Rector, 
came from Trinity parish. Erom 49 Cortlandt 
Street, Hall's Tavern, in 1787, the Boston stages 
started, every Monday and Thursday. From Cort- 
landt Street, too, was the ferry, at this time, to 
Powle's Hook (Jersey City), where the stages left 
for Philadelphia each evening. 

"THAMES STREET, originally a carriage lane, a 
^ narrow way, has as its landmark Old Tom's 
Chop House, soon to go. TIN POT ALLEY 
(Exchange Alley) was Tuyn Paat (Garden Lane). 
It led to the Governor's Gardens, in the Dutch days. 

/WI ORRIS STREET was Beaver Lane till 1829. 
^ ^ * On this street, near Broadway, was located 
the first graveyard of New York, 




A BUILDING OF I H E I 7 T H C i: N r l' K Y . 



OLD NEW' YORK DOWNTOWN 



GOVERNOR'S ISLAND. 

T^HIS island, whose Indian name was Pagganck 
* or Nut Island, lengthened by the Dutch into 
Nutten Island, was once famous for its crops of 
chestnuts. 

" Felix Oldboy " says : " The renowned Wouter 
Van Twiller, the Doubter, whose only certainty in life 
was that public office was a private trust, and who 
was the official ancestor of a long line of land 
grabbers, was the original purchaser of Pagganck 
from Cacapetegno and Pewihas, the aboriginal 
owners, and while he bought this realm of the blue- 
bird and bobolink in his capacity of director-general 
of the New Netherlands, he proceeded to use it as 
private property, as he did also Great Barn and 
Little Barn Islands — the latter nov/ known as 
Ward's and Randall's Islands — and stocked and 
cultivated them for the benefit of his own purse. 
Their ' high mightinesses, the lords of the honor- 




able West India Company,' did not relish these 
proceedings, and subsequently ordered Governor 
Stuyvesant to take steps to secure ' Nut Island and 
Hell Gate ' as public property, and this was done. 



OLD NEW YORK DOWNTOWN 

One of the English successors of Walter, the 
Doubter, was a man after his own heart ; for, when 
the Colonial Assembly placed ^i,ooo at the dis- 
posal of Lord Cornbury to fortify the island, that 
luxurious gentleman proceeded to expend the money 
in erecting for himself a handsome country resi- 
dence there, and it was not until the war of the 
Revolution broke out that fortifications were erected 
there alternately by the patriot and British forces. 
After peace was declared, and Governor Clinton, as 
executive of the sovereign and independent State of 
New York, came into possession of the island, he 
leased it for the purposes of a race course and hotel, 
and all New York went pleasuring there. But 
when, in the last term of President Washington, war 
threatened the young republic, the island was thor- 
oughly fortified by volunteers from the city, under 
the inspiring watchwords of ' Free trade and sailors' 
rights.' " 

In 1698 it was set apart by the Assembly as 
part of the Fort, and therefore called " The Gov- 
ernor's Island." Buttermilk Channel was once a 
shallow ford at low tide. 






LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 222 938 9 




